“The economy in the U.S. unexpectedly came to a standstill in the fourth quarter as the biggest plunge in defense spending in 40 years swamped gains for consumers and businesses,” Bloomberg News “unexpectedly” reports today:

This end of the blogosphere has enjoyed a delicious running joke for much of Barack Obama’s presidency…the strange appearance of the word “unexpectedly” in MSM coverage of the anemic economic recovery. Of course, many of us knew that Dear Leader’s economic policies would either amount to nothing and/or inhibit economic growth even as they were being debated, so there was nothing unexpected about the result. Still, the joke has only gotten funnier (sadder?) as time has worn on and it becomes clearer and clearer that the man-who-has-never-had-a-real-job-yet-occupies-the-White-House has no clue what he is doing when it comes to the economy. (For our purposes here, we ignore the not-so-outlandish notion that perhaps he knows exactly what he is doing, but that robust economic growth, if it is the result of typical laissez-faire American capitalism, is not his goal.)

Anyway, this joke – and the point it reveals – has finally made it somewhat mainstream via the good offices of Michael Barone, who makes it the central theme of this Washington Examiner column.

I believe that is wrong. Obama knows exactly what he is doing. He wants a fascist/socialist economy and government, and he believes that the best way to get there is to wreck the economy. That promotes dependency among the unemployed and gains a green light from the public for sweeping changes that would include increased government control of the economy. (Remember, Obama’s idol is Franklin Roosevelt.) Obama already established fascistic government control over banks and investment firms, he established socialistic government control over student loans and healthcare insurance, and he’s actively working to establish control over energy production. He also greatly increased cronyism (favored treatment of select corporations) that can easily move to fascism by heavily regulating the companies that now are dependent on government largesse.